Documents Show Truman Wiretapped Ex-fdr Aide

February 2, 1986|The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Immediately after World War II, President Truman ordered wiretaps on the home and office telephones of Thomas G. Corcoran, who had been a top assistant to President Roosevelt, government records show.

Details about the secret taps by the Federal Bureau of Investigation were disclosed in documents obtained from the Truman Library, the FBI and other sources as a result of requests under the Freedom of Information Act by Kai Bird and Max Holland, two writers who describe their find in the Feb. 8 issue of The Nation magazine.

Although the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported in 1976 that a ``former Roosevelt White House aide`` had been subjected to eavesdropping by the bureau from June 1945 to May 1948, the documents contain the first official confirmation that Corcoran was the target.

Corcoran, who died in 1981, was one of Franklin D. Roosevelt`s key New Deal strategists for much of the 1930s. In 1940 he left the government to establish a law firm that represented a number of corporations in dealings with the government. According to the records, six weeks after Truman became president, Edward McKim, a top White House aide, asked the bureau to tap Corcoran`s telephones. Courts did not consider the taps illegal.

The records do not contain any direct evidence as to why Truman ordered the surveillance. But in March 1947, an FBI official reported to the agency`s Director, J. Edgar Hoover, that the president had told a number of people that there were four people who were ```poison` to him.`` ``One of the four was Tommy Corcoran,`` the official wrote. Corcoran had opposed the nomination of Truman to be vice president.